Mr. Brendan McCabe:

To address the issue of release days for teaching principals, in primary schools two thirds of all principals in this country are teaching full-time, so there are many principals involved. Release days are invaluable. They are the only means by which a principal can find the time to handle much of the stuff that is coming at them outside the learning and curricular issues within the school. Ideally, we would like all teaching principals to have one release day per week. That is what pertains in Northern Ireland and we would like to have the same here. Obviously there are financial issues involved in that and the Department will correctly say the money is not available. However, our aspiration would be that all teaching principals would have one release day per week. It would go a long way towards addressing problems.

With regard to substitution for sick days, for certified sick leave it would certainly be desirable that any teacher would have substitution available to them.

The reality in schools, at primary level, is that when a teacher is out a whole class ends up being divided across the other teachers. That does not just impede the learning of the class being divided; unfortunately, to some extent, it will also impede the learning of the other classes. It is far from ideal that classes are split up. For any legitimate absence, as in certified sick leave, it would be desirable that there is sub cover available.